Thursday, November 8, 2018

Russia's Roscosmos confirms computer glitch on board ISS

According to Roscosmos, the reported glitch will not hamper operations on board the ISS, and the affected computer will be rebooted on Thursday. Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos confirmed on Tuesday that one of the three computers on the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) had been out of service due to a software glitch. "It will not affect the operations on board the orbital outpost as the standard cyclogram allows us to work with only two computers and still be able to fly for an indeterminately long time," Roscosmos said in a statement. The agency also stressed that there was no need to replace the computer, however it will be rebooted ahead of the arrival of Progress space freighted to the ISS. "In order to ensure the safety of the November docking with the Progress spacecraft, we will perform the reboot on November 8, 2018," the statement said. Last month, an accident occurred during the launch of a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle carrying the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with two new ISS crew members on board. Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin NASA astronaut Nick Hague safely returned to Earth in a jettisoned escape capsule.

The incident became the first failure of a manned space launch in modern Russian history. The crash is being investigated by a special commission of Russia's space agency Roscosmos. All manned launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome have been suspended until the commission finds out the causes of the failure.